Blessed (8 page)

He stood from the edge of the fountain with a huge, gleaming smile on his face. “Finally! I’ve been waiting here for you for a
very
long time. I was beginning to think you’d never show up.”

This took her by surprise and pulled her out of her stupor. “You’ve been waiting for me? How do you know me? Who are you?” The questions tumbled from her lips one right after the other. She gave him no time to answer before spitting out yet another, “Where am I?”

She felt panic rising in her stomach as memories of her unwelcome dream bubbled to the surface and assured her that the man standing in front of her had been the leading male. She tried her best to push them back down into the depths they had risen from, but every time she shoved one away, there was another to take its place.

He took a step toward her and she got the feeling that he wouldn’t be answering her questions. She shut her mouth and matched the pace of her retreat to that of his advancement. She hurriedly stepped backwards until her legs bumped into something knee-high and solid. She tumbled over the marble bench onto the thick carpet of flowers without a single ounce of the southern belle she had envisioned only minutes before.

She came to her senses and realized that it had to be a dream. As he reached out towards her, she closed her eyes and told herself to wake up. She felt his hand close around her arm and panicked. She threw every ounce of her thought into returning to her bedroom in the dreadfully quiet house.

She felt a sharp tug at her belly button and woke up on her bedroom floor.

With her heart pounding like she had just run a marathon, she jumped up from the floor and reached up to rip the pendant from her throat. That’s when she noticed the clump of hair in her right hand. Thick, soft and yellow.

It smelled like heaven and man.

After her encounter in the garden, Ardra had taken the necklace, stuffed it in its box with the clump of hair, and stuffed the box in the back of the bottom drawer of her dresser. She had been freaked out enough that her parents had asked her what was wrong, and they tried to make it a habit not to ask about her bad moods.

“Just a bad dream.” She told them.

She couldn’t exactly tell them the truth after all. She was fairly certain that the hair was proof that it was more than a dream, but explaining to her parents that she had taken a vacation from her body to rip a clump of hair out of the most beautiful man she had ever seen was
not
a conversation she wanted to have. With anyone. She was certain it would have ended with her being institutionalized. While the thought of a rubber room with one way in and one way out was tempting, she didn’t think it was entirely necessary yet.

School started up again a few days later and each day that passed pushed the memory of her psychotic break further and further from her mind. It had been a week since she had put the necklace on and taken her trip to Crazy Town and she was starting to get back into the groove of her normal life.

She grabbed hold of the distraction that homework provided and threw herself at it wholeheartedly. The more time she spent thinking about other stuff, the less time she spent fighting the urge to put the necklace back around her neck. It was working better than she had hoped it would. She still thought about it more often than not, but it had been two days since she had found the box in her hands with no memory of getting it out. That was progress.

Piper knew something was off and pushed for information whenever she got the chance, but Ardra couldn’t bring herself to tell her about her experience yet. It was still too weird.

“Ardra, you’re
never
this focused on your school work. I haven’t caught you daydreaming in Accounting all week. I’m pretty sure at this point I’m going to be the one borrowing your notes for once. Do you have any idea when the last time that happened was?” When Ardra didn’t answer, she continued, “It was in the seventh grade when I had the flu and missed a week of school. Are you seeing how my concern is justified? It’s weird!”

Ardra brushed it off with, “I realized over break that I’ve been letting myself slip. I figured I’d nip it in the bud before it started affecting my GPA. Really, Piper, I’m fine. Calm down.”

Piper wasn’t buying it. Ardra could see it in her eyes, but she let it drop for the time being and changed the subject by saying, “So, BYU sent me
another
letter. They keep begging me to transfer down there. I kinda want to write them a nasty letter and tell them that my blood is red, not blue, and it will never change. I don’t want to look like an idiot though. They’d probably think that I meant it literally and completely ignore the reference to the school rivalry. I’m a Ute and always will be!” She thumped herself on the chest over the big white “U” plastered to the front of her red hoodie to prove her point.

Ardra was thankful for the change in subject and brought up a guy that Piper had been seeing since Thanksgiving for good measure. When she ran out of things to say about the Utes, he was her next favorite topic of conversation.

“How are you and Harrison doing?”

“Oh my gosh! He’s
so
sweet! Did I tell you that he got me earrings for Christmas?
Real
diamonds! Not very big ones, but it’s the thought that counts and this way I wouldn’t have to feel bad about only getting him a video game.”

That’s how the rest of the day went. Class, Piper talking about her boy, class, boy, class. Boy on the drive home, boy during their ritual after school snack and a text about the boy after she had gone home for good measure. Ardra’s complete and utter lack of interest and zeal for the conversation seemed to have no effect on the flow of information about Harrison that was spewing forth from her best friend’s mouth.

When her phone stopped blowing up, Ardra assumed Piper had made it home safely and had settled in to do her homework. Her parents weren’t home yet and the house was quiet, so she plopped herself down on the couch in the den and turned on the TV for some mindless distraction.

As the reruns slowly lulled her into a zombie-like state. She felt herself melting into the couch and let sleep come over her in a wave. It was the first time she’d slept without dreaming since her birthday.

When her parents came through the door together she stretched and yawned, drawing the smell of Chinese take-out into her olfactory nerves.

“Mmm, what’s for dinner?” she asked as she sat up off the couch and hit the mute button on the TV remote.

“We thought that place down on State Street and third south sounded good so we stopped and grabbed some carry out. Hope that’s okay with you!” her mom called down from the kitchen.

Ardra climbed the four steps and leaned against the wooden railing that kept small kids from falling the four feet into the den, “Sounds perfect.”

As if expressing its agreement, her stomach rumbled like thunder.

“We better feed that girl before she goes all Hannibal Lecter on us!” her father joked as he put the bags down on the counter. He pulled the cardboard containers out and set them down on the table as her mom laid out three plates and forks. He opened the cartons, she stuffed spoons inside of them. It was like a little dance that they did, each move choreographed over a quarter of a century of the same routine. Ardra wondered absently if she’d ever have a dance partner.

She sat down so her father could say the blessing before they ate. While he prayed, she let her mind wander. She found her mind’s eye resting on the box where she put all the things she didn’t have a way of dealing with. The black fog. That was a dangerous path to let her mind follow, so she tore it away and focused on the words that were pouring forth from her father’s mouth.

They all said, “Amen.” And started dishing up food.

“How was school today honey?” her father asked her as he dished orange chicken onto his plate.

Since her mouth was already stuffed full of chicken and rice, she shrugged and nodded.

“Slow down Ardra.” Her mother laughed. “We promise we’ll leave you some so you can have seconds!”

Ardra focused on chewing her food before washing it down with water from the glass her mother had placed in front of her.

“Sorry. I guess I’m more hungry than I thought!” She wiped her mouth and cleared her throat before continuing, “School was good. The professors are all still in holiday mode I think. Very light homework this week. Not entirely a good thing, it simply means that they’ll make up for it when their brains come back from vacation.” She shrugged and shoveled another spoonful of fried rice into her mouth.

Both of her parents had graduated from the University of Utah and things really hadn’t changed much since their days there. They had discovered this during Ardra’s first year when a professor who had taught there when they had attended assigned her a paper on the repetition of sound in poetry and its effect on a piece.

Her father had almost choked on his dinner when she told him about it. He had been assigned the same exact same paper twenty years prior. The revelation had launched a whole conversation on the topic, leaving her mother to roll her eyes. Anne had dropped a pie on the table between them after an hour of listening to them go back and forth. She had been a Business Major, so if they weren’t talking about math, she wanted no part of the conversation. English drove her up the wall.

“I speak the language, don’t I? Why on earth do I need to take a class on how to do something I already do quite well?” had always been her argument.

No matter how many times they had tried to convince her that English classes were about more than just speaking the language, couldn’t get her to come around to their way of thinking.

Ardra had finally found a good balance between her parents with her class schedule this semester. She could talk English with her dad, and Accounting with her mom. If she was careful, she could bounce back and forth often enough that they would both cross over into the other’s territory and they could all talk math
and
English.

She preferred to save herself the work and avoid the subject of school whenever she could.

Small talk was the theme for the rest of the meal. There wasn’t enough time for food
and
heavy conversation, so they stuck to topics like the weather, shopping, and church.

Ardra was glad that her parents weren’t as pushy as Piper was when something was a little off with her attitude. As long as she wasn’t yelling at people and slamming doors, they rarely raised an eyebrow over her bouts of seclusion. It was pretty normal for her to withdraw for a few days and spend hours reading or doing homework. She liked to escape to a less stressful place sometimes and books were the perfect tool for getting there as far as she was concerned.

After dinner, she headed to the den and flopped down on the couch with her book of the moment while she digested. She quickly sank into the story that was laid out in front of her and vanished into the world contained between the covers.

As she closed the book several hours later, she felt the sense of accomplishment that always came with finishing a book. She stretched and mulled over the story that she had just participated in and quickly decided that she had really enjoyed it. Especially the closure at the end. Nothing bugged her more than when an author left you hanging at the end of a book. It was like watching a movie where the main character just walks off into the forest at the end for no reason. It wasn’t something that tickled her fancy.

Her parents must have gone to sleep while she was reading. All the lights in the house were off except for the upstairs hall light where her bedroom was. She was willing to bet they had both said goodnight, and that she had responded, but for the life of her she couldn’t remember.

She flipped the light off at the top of the stairs and flipped her bedroom light on after closing the door behind her.  

She went through her nightly hair brushing ritual, laid out an outfit for the next day, said a prayer, shut off the light and let herself sink into slumber.

The face that swam out of the darkness was only vaguely familiar at first. The shadows that passed over it, kept her from getting a good look. She could only catch a glimpse of an eyeball here and a jaw line there. As her vision cleared and the scene before her came into the sharp relief that only a dream could, she saw that the shadows weren’t shadows at all. They were tentacles, exactly like the ones she kept locked inside of her—smokey and ethereal, yet solid and threatening all at the same time.

They were writhing.

Constricting.

Like she always did, she ran forward to tear the tentacles off of the man and, like they always did, they fought back. Pulling her into them and sticking to her skin everywhere they touched.

It never took long for them to completely surround and consumer her.

She tried to scream and a tentacle slithered into her mouth and down her throat. The taste of dead flesh filled her mouth as the thing probed and groped for something inside of her. As she choked and gagged on the slick black mass wriggling inside of her, she could only ask herself how she could have let it out. Because of her, this poor man was trapped inside of her personal hell with her. If only she could have contained it.